Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
A FIRE THAT ravaged a Covid-19 hospital in the Iraqi capital killed 82 people and sparked angry calls for the sacking of officials, in a country with long-dilapidated health infrastructure.
The blaze at Baghdad’s Ibn al-Khatib hospital started with an explosion caused by “a fault in the storage of oxygen cylinders”, medical sources told AFP.
Officials announced today that the death toll had climbed from 58 to 82. A further 110 people suffered injuries.
Flames spread quickly across multiple floors in the middle of the night, as dozens of relatives were at the bedsides of the 30 patients in the hospital’s intensive care unit where most severe Covid-19 cases are treated, a medical source said.
“The hospital had no fire protection system and false ceilings allowed the flames to spread to highly flammable products,” the civil defence said.
“The majority of the victims died because they had to be moved and were taken off ventilators, while the others were suffocated by the smoke,” it added.
Videos on social media showed firefighters battling to put out the blaze as patients and their relatives tried to flee the building.
“It was the people who got the wounded out,” Amir, 35, told AFP, saying he saved his hospitalised brothers “by the skin of his teeth”.
Iraq’s hospitals have been worn down by decades of conflict and poor investment, with shortages in medicines and hospital beds.
The incident sparked outrage on social media and Prime Minister Mustafa al-Khademi called for an investigation into the cause of the blaze, and declared three days of national mourning.
Negligence
After daybreak, dozens of tall oxygen cylinders that had been evacuated could be seen lined up outside the building, alongside gurneys and scattered debris, an AFP photograph said.
More than 200 patients in all were rescued, according to the health ministry, which pledged to release an official toll of the dead and wounded later.
The fire – which according to several sources was caused by negligence often linked to endemic corruption in Iraq – sparked anger on social media, with a hashtag demanding the health minister be sacked trending on Twitter.
Baghdad Governor Mohammed Jaber called on the health ministry “to establish a commission of enquiry so that those who did not do their jobs may be brought to justice”.
In a statement, the government’s human rights commission said the incident was “a crime against patients exhausted by Covid-19 who put their lives in the hands of the health ministry and its institutions and instead of being treated, perished in flames”.
The commission called on the prime minister to fire Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi and “bring him to justice”.
Kadhemi responded by calling for “an investigation” – echoing President Barham Saleh and parliament speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi – and said he wanted results “within 24 hours”.
The prime minister also suspended the health director for the eastern sector of Baghdad and the head of Ibn al-Khatib, as well as the hospital’s heads of security and technical maintenance teams.
They are being questioned and nobody, Kadhemi said, will be released “until those who have done wrong are brought to justice”.
Mounting coronavirus cases
The UN top representative in Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, expressed “shock” at the tragedy and called “for stronger protection measures to ensure that such a disaster cannot reoccur”.
On Wednesday, the number of Covid-19 cases in Iraq surpassed one million, the highest of any Arab state.
The health ministry has recorded more than 15,000 deaths since the country’s first infections were reported in February 2020, and has carried out around 40,000 tests daily from a population of 40 million.
Rather than go to overcrowded or run-down hospitals, patients who can afford it have often set up oxygen tanks for their use at home.
Iraq rolled out its vaccination campaign last month and has received nearly 650,000 doses of different vaccines – the majority by donation or through the Covax scheme.
Around 300,000 people had received at least one dose as of Wednesday, the ministry said.
Health authorities have faced an uphill battle to convince Iraqis to get vaccinated, in the face of widespread scepticism over the jab and public reluctance to wear masks since the start of the pandemic.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Would have been nice to have even a single comment from a sex worker rather than Ruhama (an organisation rooted in Catholicism with a definite agenda) or the Gardai. Poor quality journalism
@Eoin Silke: Except this is about trafficked women who are being clearly exploited.
“The brothels used by these gangs are staffed almost exclusively by a transient workforce of sex workers trafficked into Ireland. ”
This isn’t about someone choosing to become a sex worker for whatever reason they choose. This is about people with no say in the process.
@Tricia G:
The quote
“The brothels used by these gangs are staffed almost exclusively by a transient workforce of sex workers trafficked into Ireland” is attributed only to “Sources with a knowledge of the investigations” which is meaningless in terms of evidence, any time I have tried to chase up similar statements in the past they turn out to be anonymous opinions with no factual basis.
I am a source with knowledge of the investigations, I even took that a step further by conducting my own investigations today and establishing that €1000 pw for self catering accommodation can be quite a bargain in many areas. Not only do you have my real name to go with that, you can find the evidence yourself on booking com and airbnb.
The only way to know an facts about coercive sex trafficking is to stop using it as an excuse for laws that harm and endanger everyone who sells sex (including coerced victims) and start to think of it, and investigate it, as the serious crime it is, on par with kidnap for ransom. So far, nobody ever seems to have even tried to do that, with the result that if someone is being coerced into selling sex there is little to no hope of anyone identifying and locating them let alone doing anything to help them.
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/victims-of-the-same-fiction/
Legalisation and start demanding that our government starts treating us as adults.
@Robert Halvey: remember the article is about trafficked women who are not choosing to be sex workers but subjected to daily rapes by their ‘customers’ and violent coercion by the gangs controlling these operations.
@e: Amazing how people completely ignore the victims in all this. Even the article refers to them as sex workers, they’re not workers. They’re sex trafficking victims being horribly exploited by ruthless criminals who think people can be treated like property. Sadly I’m not even surprised some landlords are fine with what’s going on in their properties.
@Rui Firmino: look at the article again, there are no specifics from verifiable sources and unsubstantiated opinions expressed by an unverifiable and anonymous source.
The headline is spun into clickbait around what turns out to be a scary, but, currently, perfectly normal, charge for any self catering accommodation.
The only way to care about any victim is to go looking for the hard facts of their circumstances rather than blindly following expedient, agenda driven fiction for appearance sake.
@Gaye Dalton: You sound awfully defensive.
@Rui Firmino:
@Rui Firmino: good point. And a very big difference too.
@Brendan Harlowe:
Alternatively there is reality
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/victims-of-the-same-fiction/
Men, stop frequenting these places! The cops should arrest the Johns. The unfortunate women in these situations need our help, not our willies.
Remember folks, criminalising sex work facilitates trafficking. Current anti-sex work laws increase violence against sex workers and victims of trafficking.
Ruhama is NOT a trusted source.
@Conor McK: The Garda Protective Unit believes there are trafficked women forced into prostitution here. Are you saying that should be legalised?
@e: “ Then stop the trafficking, but what about the women who voluntarily do this?
Women should be free to do what they want with their bodies.
@e: Less opportunity for traffickers if there is already a legalised established trade. I don’t think anybody is advocating trafficking here.
@e: There are women forced into marriage.
Should we criminalise all bridegrooms?
Legal to sell, but Illegal to buy… Irish logic
@Stoic Savage: because historically women were blamed and charged. It was changed to blame the people soliciting (so that’s the pimp or the John), in order not to victim blame those doing it, as they often had no other choice. I agree if women want a safe space to engage in sex work it should be legal. But equally there are many women, either literally forced into sex work by threat of violence or for other reasons such as feeding addiction, social isolation or financial insecurity. It needs a whole government response rather than relying on charitable organisations to do these studies.
@e: The only organisation exclusively, and lavishly, funded to research the sake and purchase of sex is SERP at UCD which was founded by the same person who founded and lead the “Turn Off the Red Light” campaign, which aggresively demanded the current legislation over the opposition and concerns of people who sell sex.
So far, since they were founded, they seem to have limited their total consultation with current sex workers to 4, or possibly 5.
We cannot ever understand anything without real, objective and impartial research.
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/serp-ucd-transcript/
Open borders,cheered on by the likes of this publication,is a destroyer of Irish society.
This didn’t happen when Irish people went to mass weekly.
@ggg: You’re right. Back then the church looked after the sex on our behalf.
@ggg: Yeah the good old days when you could take advantage of a young woman and know that everyone would keep quiet for shame and she’d end up in a Magdalene laundry if she got pregnant.
@ggg: Yeah, they would just get raped by the priest later. Much better!
@Diarmuid Hunt: We’re talking about prostitution.
@west awake: ggg was talking about the time when all went to mass in Ireland, are you telling him that we’re talking about prostitution?
@west awake:
@west awake: So going back to what ggg was saying and my reply can you see why there would be less demand to pay for sex in a shame controlled society (not that it didn’t happen because it did then too) where it was easier to prey on women? Also how do we know that there was a lower percentage of prostitution per capita, do you think reporting on this topic to either Gardaí or the media happened as often back then?
This seems to be a load of nonsense centred on PR for Ruhama and trying to deflect culpability in the murder of Geila Ibram. away from the 2017 Sexual Offences Act.
Fact: The 2017 Sexual Offences Act forces women who sell sex to work alone, hold large amounts of cash and hide from Gardai to be able to make any money..
Fact: When you force women to work alone, hold large amounts of cash and hide from Gardai to be able to make any money you endanger them.
Fact: The 2017 Sexual Offences Act specifically targets the income source of people who sell sex
Fact: When you attack the only source of a person’s income you do them harm. If it is their last resort survival income you also threaten their life.
Fact: €1000 for one week for one person in self catering accommodation is not even slightly unusual, and, in some areas would be such a bargain you would be tempted to ask if the offer available above is limited to people selling sex, or can anybody apply?
5000?? Fcuking hell.
Once again we see a lucrative business handed to organised crime gangs who run it to squeeze the maximum profit to themselves with no regard for anyone else.
Why do these people have such a large market for their imported slaves ? Large enough to go to the trouble of importing them!
Clearly making the customer a criminal hasn’t destroyed their market – presumably far too few get caught.
To my eye the most unacceptable part of prostitution is the exploitation and control involved. If it is to happen (and it is not for nothing it is known as the oldest profession) it should be by choice and the prostitute should keep her earnings with only the taxman permitted to gouge her for a share. The current setup, while in principle it seems to protect the prostitute working solely for herself, in practice it seems that only the slavers get to operate.
Legalisation and licensing would seem to be the only way to wrest this business from the hands of organised crime and remove the incentive for them to cause so much misery.
Remember a few years ago seeing a young Eastern-European woman looking nervous at Dublin Airport with some late 50’s gangster-looking Dub. The whole scene looked wrong but didn’t know how to intervene. To this day I’m pretty damn sure this was some kind of trafficking situation but even with hindsight not sure what I’d have been able to do. Very sad.
Just wondering if the policy of allowing Ruhamma the ability to vouch for so called Sex workers still is a way to get Irish residency. In other words saying you have been trafficked into this country is a positive in order to gain residency. It’s hard not to be cynical with regards to so called asylum seekers. How are these people coming across our borders, have we no vice squad anymore leaving aside the end user, which is another matter ?
have your say